Wild Wild West

Night of the Deadly Bed, #6502

While waiting for a contact named Captain Jackson, West is attacked by an unknown assailant. Jackson appears, but before West can get to him, the captain is blown up, whispering the name "Florey" with his dying breath. West follows a trail to a small Mexican village where he gets drugged and nearly killed by a spiked bed. He notices workers carrying baskets of coal into an old mission on a warm day and reports back to agent Artemus Gordon. West returns to the mission and discovers a giant underground complex. He is captured and brought before the mastermind of the project, Florey, who plans to reclaim Mexico and establish Napoleonic rule. Florey plans to execute West, but Gordon appears, disguised as a Mexican peasant and carrying knockout gas. His escape plan backfires, however and both agents are trapped in the hands of the man who calls himself Napoleon the Fourth.

The Night of the Deadly Bed was the first of ten episodes produced by Fred Freiberger, brought in to replace Collier Young after the latter had done only three episodes. Young had tried to push the show in a more comic direction, much to the dissatisfaction of CBS. Director Bill Whitney said that the shot involving the "deadly bed" required a stunt so dangerous that he refused to let Conrad do it. Conrad, however, was equally adamant about doing the stunt himself. The set was closed down for several hours during the ensuing argument, which Conrad won.

* The above information was compiled from The Wild Wild West: The Series by Susan E. Kesler (Arnett Press), "Michael Garrison's Wild Wild West," an article by Robert Alan Crick in Epi-Log Journal #11 and other sources.